Olivia Sinclair (chase_the_high) wrote in odysseyic, @ 2018-03-24 22:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | aisling, olivia |
Hot Air Balloons
Who: Aisling and Olivia
Where: Aisling's room
When: After her talk with Jacob
Olivia hadn’t been able to shake this feeling of dread that had settled in her stomach after her fight with Jacob. She’d done everything she could to stay busy, alternating between check ups with him where they both didn’t really talk and taking Bodie for actual runs around the ship’s decks. Runs. Olivia didn’t run, but that’s what she’d been doing.
Nothing had helped, so when Aisling texted her to come over she thought maybe this would help. It would hurt but maybe it could help her get all this weight off her chest and get back to a place where she wasn’t so scared of losing Jacob. Where she could stand by him and support him without feeling sick with worry all the time.
She’d dropped Bodie off with Jacob, wanting to tell him that she was going to see his sister but he was asleep when she got there and waking him wasn’t even an option for her. So she walked to Aisling’s room, a long curl wringing over and over on her finger even as she reached out with the other hand to knock on the door.
Aisling had been busy since her talk with Jacob. She had checked in on him regularly, but she had also helped talk to other passengers, new and otherwise, to help get situated on the ship and to talk about what had happened. PTSD was a real thing, and even what had happened in Stockholm could leave a mark if it wasn’t dealt with.
When she was finally free to give more than just a little bit of time for Olivia, she sent a text and had the woman come to her. While she waited for her to arrive, Aisling set out water and a cheese and fruit tray she had ordered, wanting to make it comfortable and relaxed. When the knock to her door came, she sent a quick text to Bear that she had Olivia over and to not interrupt for a little while, knowing he would understand, and then set her phone down and went to the door.
“Hey,” she greeted her brother’s fiance and then pulled her into a hug. “I’m glad that you could come. Come in, sit down, relax…” she then said as she released Olivia from the hug.
Olivia let herself fall into Aisling’s hug, breathing in her scent and feeling her arms around her and just wanting to break down right there. She held her back, grippin her maybe a little tighter than she should have, and stayed in the hug for just a bit longer before she let Aisling’s cue pull them apart.
Clearing her throat, she nodded, stepped out of her fuzzy boots, and settled down on the couch. “Are you okay? You didn’t get hurt back in Sweden, did you? I’m sorry I didn’t text sooner. I just...a lot’s been going on.”
“I’m fine,” Aisling smiled, door shutting and then taking a seat next to Olivia. “It’s okay. I was in touch with Jacob and he said you were fine, and I’ve been extremely busy with all the trauma patients needing someone to talk with and through the ordeal they’ve been through,” she continued. “I wanted to touch base with you sooner, but I wanted to make sure I could dedicate more than just a passing moment of my time,” she smiled. “Jacob told me that the two of you had a bit of a...fight? Want to tell me what happened?”
Olivia took a bit breath and let it out slowly. IT was practiced; a reaction she’d honed over many years in the public domain.
Did she want to tell Aisling what happened? Honestly, no, but she felt like she needed to. She sort of felt like she needed to say something to someone who was right here, in front of her. The digital solution of a psychiatrist from back home in New York wasn’t really working for her. She’d not told Andrew yet, but she felt like she wasn’t being heard. Like the doctor just...didn’t care.
When she finally did look back up at Aisling, her face was crestfallen. The weight of her worries was heavy in her eyes, around her mouth, in the way that she wrapped her hair around her finger again and started twirling it. “We fought. It was horrible. He…He almost died and we fought about something so stupid and I feel...there’s not a good word for how I feel. Awful doesn’t even fit.”
Aisling’s face turned sad the moment Olivia looked up at her. She could see the pain, hurt, and worry written all over the other woman as if it were marked by a pen. “Oh Olivia,” she murmured and reached out for her free hand. “Every couple fight,” she assured her. Of course, she and Bear had yet to have a fight, but she assumed it would happen eventually. In fact, she thought it was rather strange that they hadn’t had a fight yet as they were still growing and getting to know each other.
“Tell me what you fought about,” she gently pressured her. She knew, of course. Jacob had told her a few things . “Just tell me everything and I’ll try to help you sort through it.”
Even just that contact had her eyes tearing up again. Olivia wasn’t ready to unleash all of this with Aisling. She already felt so guilty, so unbelievable unsupportive… But deep down she knew that she had to start talking. Because at the very best, this wasn’t getting any better. And at the worst, which felt a lot like the direction this was going, she was going to lose Jacob one way or another and she wouldn’t handle that well at all.
So she tried to think back through all of the yelling to where it started. “I...I got scared. He almost died, Aisling. And I got scared that I was going to lose him and then he started talking about Mickey and how I didn’t tell him that we went to lunch and I totally thought I had but it happened right before everything just downspiraled, I think it was right before Charleston but that feels like a million years ago and honestly I just forgot I guess. And then I was thinking, why the hell does this matter? You almost died and this is what matters to you right now? Like, you know I love you, right? You know that! Unless you don’t know that. Unless for some reason, somehow, I haven’t done a good enough job of explaining to you that I love you and…”
She broke off, a sob getting caught in her throat and she had to turn away, to pull her hands away from Aisling and cover her face so the tears were at least contained somewhere.
Aisling held quiet while Olivia started to explain. She mentally stored Mickey’s name away, it was the first time it had been used with her and now she knew the man’s name. When Olivia pulled away, turning to cover her face, Aisling instantly reached for the tissue box with one hand, the other hand going to rest on Olivia’s back while she comforted her.
“Shh..It’s okay. You are going to get through this,” she spoke quietly, soothingly. “I don’t think Mickey or you having lunch with him is really the problem,” she started. “Or the fact that Jacob decided to pull on that thread and you let him,” she went on. “It’s obvious that he wanted to know who the man was, and it was apparently brought to his attention at some point that the man that saved both of your lives is someone that you had lunch with. Someone that ended up in the tabloid with you and most likely it was turned into something that it actually wasn’t. Maybe he caught on that this man likes you, or maybe something else...maybe he felt threatened by a man he knew nothing about that was able to save you when he was having his ass handed to him,” she rubbed at Olivia’s back a moment. “I believe there is something else going on here, something more underlying that neither one of you really wants to admit. Jacob loves you, you love Jacob, but even though you both say it and I know that you both do, you both find a way to somehow keep yourselves at arms length.”
There was so much in that for Olivia to process and it felt a lot like all the words Aisling said were just swirling around in her head and none of them were really taking root. She still didn’t understand why this thing with Mickey was such a big deal, but maybe she was right. Maybe Jacob was just worried. She was worried all the time, just never about someone else encroaching on him. She knew he loved her, that he would never look at anyone else and she’d hoped he knew the same thing was true for her but it just didn’t feel that way anymore.
But the rest of that, the arm’s length part, scared her more than anything else. “You think I’m trying to keep him at arm's length?” She asked, her face screwed up and her voice muffled behind her hands.
Aisling noted that Olivia skipped over saying anything more about the Mickey guy and going straight to another part. She laid the box of tissues on Olivia’s lap and then nodded, before realizing that Olivia couldn’t see her at the moment.
“I believe that you are so scared of losing him, whether it be by someone else's hands or his own, that you keep a small amount of distance to protect yourself,” she answered. “In which case I don’t blame you. You have both been through a lot and it would be normal.” She hesitated a moment before moving on. “You walk around on eggshells, if there is an issue no matter the magnitude you probably keep it to yourself, and I… You have to admit that things are most certainly different since the pirate attack, he has said that you told him you are afraid you are going to lose him, and I just think…” she trailed off a moment. “I think that if that is the basis for your relationship, that it’s not fair to either one of you and certainly not healthy.”
Olivia finally lowered her hands, revealing red eyes and tear-stained cheeks, and just stared at Aisling. She was positive Aisling hadn’t meant it to feel this way, but what she’d said felt like a slap in the face. So she ended up just staring at her sister-in-law, eyebrows knit into a hard line of wrinkles as she tried to put words together to express how she felt.
“So if you were in my shoes, if Bear was in Jacob’s, you wouldn’t be so petrified of losing him that you do anything you can just to make the moments you have with him good? That you’d just be able to put aside the fact that your fiance twice - not once, but twice - has come so close to dying that you have actual nightmares about it happening?”
Aisling was quiet for a moment and thought over Olivia’s words before speaking. She understood where Olivia was coming from, how she felt, more than Olivia might think. “Olivia, I’ve nearly lost my brother several times throughout our lives, the one person in my life and from my family that I could always count on to have my back, the one person that I’ve loved the moment he came into this world. It’s just been he and I against the world for as long as I can remember, so yes I fear of losing him every single day.” But that wasn’t what Olivia had actually asked. “When it comes to Bear, if our roles were reversed, yes I would fear losing him as you do Jacob. In fact, I do fear it. But it can’t be what fuels the relationship,” she gave a small sigh and looked down at her hands a moment in thought. “I’m not saying what you are feeling is wrong, because it is totally not. What I am saying is that you can’t let it be the shadow that follows you every day. You nearly lost him. Nearly. But you didn’t, and that is what you should focus on. Not what could have happened, but that he survived, is here and loves you so very much.”
And now she felt even worse. She’d never meant to diminish what Aisling had gone through with Jacob. She felt sick hearing Aisling talk, knowing now that the few times she’d almost lost Jacob couldn’t compare to the lifetime of worries that Aisling had.
But thankfully Aisling kept talking and it helped pull Olivia out of her internal guilt trip just enough that she could actually hear what the woman was saying. “I don’t want this to be what fuels our relationship. It never was before and I don’t want it to be now. But I don’t know how not to be scared that I’ll lose him. He’s so important, he’s my most important person, and I just...I…” She trailed off again and ran her hands over her eyes. “I want to get us back to something that is less fear and more love again. I just feel really lost on how to do that.”
Aisling smiled and reached out to grab Olivia’s hand, giving it a squeeze of reassurement. “You need to focus on living,” she told her. “That’s how. Find and do things that make you happy. Get out of your room, go on long walks, cuddle and watch movies, eat pizza by candlelight,” she grinned. “You’ll never push the fear completely away. From experience, it will always be there somewhere in the back of your head. What changes is that you’ll see the light in his eyes and the smile on his lips, you’ll see him laughing and enjoying life and it’s those moments that keeps that fear at a distance so that you, too, can enjoy life,” she smiled. “But first, and foremost, you both need to talk. You need to spill your guts. Let it all out. All the fear and your worries. Don’t be afraid that it will be a burden for him. Let him help you carry the load, because him not knowing how you actually feel and seeing the worry set within you is heavier than him knowing what it is exactly. Let it all out and let it go,” she paused a moment and then smiled again. “And there is one more thing I can have you do that will help the both of you take steps forward from all of this.”
And that was it, wasn’t it? Aisling always found the base of her worries. She was actually terrified that if she told Jacob everything, that it would only hurt him more. That it might weigh the scales in the wrong way and she’d lose him for good. And that wasn’t a way to live. He deserved more than that and she needed to be able to trust that in this new normal they were making, that they’d make it through together.
Nodding, she finally reached for a tissue and wiped her face, then lifted her eyes in time to see Aisling’s smile. “...What’s that?”
“It might sound weird, but I’ve read that it is really helpful in letting things go when it’s time,” Aisling started. “I want you and Jacob to write down all your fears and everything that is holding you back, and then you can do one of two things: You can burn them, or you can send them away,” she explained. “And by sending them away, you make some tiny hot air balloons, put your fears in them and send them off, if that makes sense,” she looked at Olivia. “The goal is that you are letting your fears go and will no longer let them rule you.”
It didn’t sound weird. It sounded nice. Like a visual reminder that their fears, their combined fears, were gone. Not forgotten, not completely removed, but gone from their lives. A little light came back into her eyes and she nodded again. “I like that. It’s kind of beautiful.” She sniffled, wiped at her nose with the tissue in her hand, and took a deep breath. “Okay. We can do that.” Then, finally, she shifted closer and hugged Aisling again. “Thank you.”
Aisling wrapped her arms around Olivia in the hug and held her close. “You’re welcome. I love you, Olivia, just remember that. I’ll do whatever I can to help you and my brother because I really think the two of you are meant for each other.”
With as much worry and fear and darkness she’d felt the last couple of days, Olivia wasn’t sure when she’d start to feel light again. But right now, she was light. She was light enough to squeeze Aisling again and pull back with an actual smile on her face. “I love you too, Aisling. I’ve got some writing to do.”